Is the Bible the World's Longest Game of Telephone?

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan. And

Dan Beecher I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How go things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher Things are good. Uh, we, we, we've got a, we're, we're going back to nursery school a little bit- ... uh, today because, uh, we're gonna, we're gonna be doing a what's that. Uh, and the what's that is the, uh, the telephone game. Uh- Yeah ... we might, we might have called it operator when I was a kid. I don't remember exactly what we called. That's, that's an old person- ... uh, reference. Yeah. So there you go with that. Uh, but yeah, we're gonna talk about the transmission of the Bible, and, uh, whether or not it was, uh, just a game, just a good old-fashioned game of telephone. Uh- Yeah,

Dan McClellan the, the world's longest game of telephone- ... as it has been called by, by a number of commentators and comedians and things like that.

Dan Beecher Yeah. So let's, let's just get into it. Uh, what's that? All right. So, uh, you mentioned the, this telephone game. Comedians have talked about it. You, you sent me a thing where, uh, where one of, one of my... Not, not... Uh, yeah, I guess I, I'm gonna call him one of my favorite comedians.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Uh, had, w- talked about it a little bit. Um- Mm ... I'm trying to find the quote. It was David Cross who you- Yeah ... who said, and I'll just use his, uh, his quote as our, as our launching off point. Uh, he said, "Back when the Bible was written, then edited, then rewritten, then rewritten, then re-edited, then translated from dead languages, then retranslated, then edited, then rewritten. So I guess what I'm saying is the Bible is literally the world's oldest game of telephone." Uh, and, uh, Dan, I, I take it you have something to say about that claim.

Dan McClellan Well, I, you get this... I think there are two dimensions in which people talk about, uh, the Bible as, as the world's oldest or longest game of telephone, and I think there's one dimension that's a little more accurate than the other. Because sometimes people will say, "It's been translated so many times, that we can't know what it was saying."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And this is, this is something that, um, you know, a, a lot of people are vaguely aware that the Bible exists in a variety of language and that Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin, and English are, are relevant to the, that whole process.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And they imagine that what we have today are translations of translations of translations of translations.

Dan Beecher Which is, which if anybody has ever taken a piece of text and put it into Google Translate and- ... had it translated into one language, and then take that and translate it into another language, and then you keep doing that, and then eventually you try to come back to English, and it's fun. That's-

Dan McClellan Oh, boy. Yeah, no, it's, it's a mess. Yeah. And, and a lot of people think that that's what's going on, and that we can't trust translations of the Bible these days because of that, and there's just zero truth to that. Mm. Um, well, I'll say it this, there's, as, as a game of telephone, there's zero truth to that. But I do wanna talk about some of the nuances of reliance on translations in translation. But whenever we get a new translation of the Bible, particularly into English, but in most languages, there are languages where there are exceptions, but for the most part, into English, a new translation of the Bible is going to be a translation of some version of the Hebrew, the Aramaic, or the Greek. In other words, we always try to go back to the source languages.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So we can skip over the Arabic, and the Latin, and the Gothic, and the Syriac, and the other translations, and go back to Hebrew and Greek. And so if someone is thinking that the Bible has been translated so many times that we're really, you know, helplessly deconnected, dis- ... coupled from the source text- Right ... or the source languages at least, that's just not true. There's no truth to that.

Dan Beecher Right. It's not like- So- ... it's not like it was translated into the Latin, and then the Latin was translated into the French, and then the French was translated into the German, and then the German was translated into the English, and never once did anybody look back several steps to check in to see if, like, how we're doing on this. It's-

Dan McClellan Yeah, and- ...

Dan Beecher that's not what happened.

Dan McClellan And that's, and that's actually part of what is responsible for the Protestant Reformation, was a bunch of people going, "Hey, what if instead of just translating the Latin Vulgate, we went back to the Greek and Hebrew?" And that's what folks like Desiderius Erasmus and, uh, William Tyndale, and Martin Luther all did. Right. Was, uh, Erasmus prepared an edition of the Greek New Testament that was Greek rather than the Latin, and then a bunch of people went, "Whoa, wait a minute, we can translate the New Testament directly from the Greek now." And ever since then, we've been trying to figure out what the earliest recoverable shape of the New Testament was using Greek manuscripts. So, like, that was an issue, but it was really Latin was the only language that was in the way.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And even, even, um, some of the Catholic editions of the Bible that used to be translated from the Latin, they now translate them from the Greek and the Hebrew as well. So, so we, we got around that obstacle. So when it comes to translation, that's just not really an issue. Now-

Dan Beecher Okay. I mean- So- ... we've read bad translations before, so it can be an issue, but it's a one issue. It's a one, l- it's a one-step issue. It's like- Yeah, i-

Dan McClellan if you got a bad translation, you got a bad translation. That's the fault of the translation.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Um, and there are, you know, there are other languages. So there are some Pidgin and Creole languages, Tok Pisin For instance, uh, like I, I think one of the most popular translations of the Bible into Tok Pisin is actually a translation of the King James Version-

Dan Beecher Uh-huh

Dan McClellan ... or some other English translation into the Bible into Tok Pisin. So, uh, you know, there are languages where it is from one language to another to another. But that's, that's m- phenomenally rare.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, but the, the dimension where this is more accurate, I think, is when it comes to the transmission of manuscripts. Uh, because one of, one of the things that when we look back at the history of Bible translation, Desiderius Erasmus was starting from manuscripts that dated to between the l- the 1100s and the 1500s.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Like, that's very recent compared to, you know, the 1,000 years, 1,500 years earlier.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan We have since found, uh, a lot of much earlier manuscripts, and so now we can cobble together a version of the Greek New Testament that we think is more reliable. And this is where we have, you know, verses that are just entirely cut out of modern translations because we've managed to recover better versions of, of the New Testament, for instance. And so our New Testaments today will omit usually about 16 verses. So we've done a really good job of making up for that gap, but when we go back to our earliest manuscripts of, uh, every last verse of the New Testament, let's say, we have a bunch of manuscripts and a bunch of quotations from patristic authors dating to between the second century CE and then even following after the invention of the printing press.

Dan Beecher Sorry, you said patristic authors, and I r- I almost let it slide, and then I realized I don't even-

Dan McClellan Oh

Dan Beecher ... know what patristic means.

Dan McClellan Church fathers. So this would be the very influential, authoritative, um, early Christian thinkers and writers.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, uh, from the second century, you have, like, Justin Martyr and Tertullian, and from the third century, you have folks like Origen and, and people like that. So those folks are quoting an awful lot from the Bible, and so we can use their quotations to kind of triangulate what, uh, the, the manuscripts they were looking at m- may have looked like-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... even if we don't have an actual manuscript from that time period. So, um-

Dan Beecher Which we don't.

Dan McClellan Well, for, for most of the text of the New Testament, uh, I would say... Well, n- maybe not most. I think, uh, you certainly don't get a full-- You can't cobble together every last verse of the New Testament until you get to the great uncial manuscripts of the fourth century.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, like, Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, those are the first. Those allow us to fill in every single gap. Prior to that, you probably have, between the patristic quotations and New Testament manuscripts, you can probably account for, like, 95% of the New Testament text. But there are only four fragmentary manuscripts of the New Testament that are even dated anywhere in the second century CE. And then I think when you get into the third century CE, it's, like, five or six.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, like, you... And, and those are just either a fragment of a single book or maybe fragments of a collection of Pauline epistles or, or something like that. So it's not large percentages of the New Testament. But then you've got a black hole between those earliest manuscripts and whenever these texts were written, and that's where the telephone game is a live option.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Because that's where you have people passing these manuscripts along and copying them, and the closer you get to their original composition, it seems to me, the more likely there is to be change-

Dan Beecher Hmm

Dan McClellan ... and the least likely that change is to be detectable.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And, and so we don't know who was on the other end of the line- ... uh, after the message got passed on from whoever wrote it, and we don't know how much they changed that message. And, and I think we can probably say we- we're pretty close when it comes to the New Testament, but we have all kinds of theories-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... about changes that were introduced. We, uh, we-

Dan Beecher Well, like you say, I mean, even, we know there's a whole bunch of verses that we now eliminate because they just, they showed up later, and we have earlier versions that don't have them.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Like, so we know that this is happening. That's, th- that's kind of, like, sort of proof of concept-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... that something, th- these, these texts get messed with, they get added to, they get, they do get changed.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And, and I think there, there are folks out there I've had arguments with, uh, at least one of them on Twitter, scholars who work in textual criticism, who have told me to my virtual face- ... that we can be confident that nothing changed in between original composition and our earliest manuscripts. And that just baffles me 'cause, like, we know things change when the manuscripts get transmitted. On what grounds are we justified to say, "Except for those decades-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... or that century where magically nothing changed"?

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Um, so I, I do think there's a, a sense in which the telephone game is a live option, and I think it gets... And, and I mentioned theories about things. And this is not just, you know, maybe this word actually said something different, but, like, adding entire chapters. Like, we had, uh, Hugo Mendez on talking about the Gospel of John, and, you know, we already know about the, uh, the woman-taken-in-adultery story.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But he says all of chapter 21 was added later.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And I, and, and I think the case for that is strong. When you look at how 20 seems to tie things off in a nice, neat little bow, and then 21's like, "So then this happened." And then ties things off in almost the exact same way, and says things like, "Yeah, this, this is the, the testimony, you know, this is the, the disciple who wrote this testimony, and we know that it's true." Who's we?

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Um, so I, I think there's that. There's, you know, people who think that Luke 1 and 2 were added secondarily. There are folks who think that 2 Corinthians is actually a cobbling together of multiple different letters that Paul wrote. But when then, then when we get to the Hebrew Bible, it's even, like, uh, significantly worse for a number of reasons, including the fact that a lot of these texts were written many centuries prior to our earliest manuscripts.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then, so... And we have evidence of significant change. So for instance, the Book of Jeremiah and the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have manuscripts of, um, very, very fragmentary manuscripts, just a handful of verses, that match up with the Septuagint version of Jeremiah over and against the Masoretic Text. And the Septuagint version has things in a different order, and it also eliminates some things. And the Septuagint's Book of Jeremiah is about one-sixth shorter than the Masoretic Text version of the Book of Jeremiah. But the Dead Sea Scrolls would suggest that, that o- that one-sixth shorter version of Jeremiah was in circulation in Hebrew very, very early. And so it certainly sounds like somebody has added a bunch of text to Jeremiah. And then we get into Pentateuchal source criticism. How did the five books of Moses come together? We got all kinds of theories about that.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And there, there are texts that make it really clear that at some point, these stories looked much different than how we have them. So for instance, Exodus 6:3. In Exodus 3, God has already introduced themselves to Moses and said, uh, you know, "My name is Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh. You shall tell them Ehyeh sent you." Uh, and then in Exodus 6, God comes back and says, "Hey, it's me. I am Adonai. Uh, but Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knew me as El Shaddai, and they did not know me by my name, Adonai." But you can go look at Genesis 15:7, where God says to Abraham, "Hey, man. My name's Adonai."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And Abraham goes, "Oh, Adonai."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Um, and so where, where is the author of Exodus 6 getting this idea that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob didn't know the name Adonai? Most likely, they had versions of these stories before them that did not have those stories, or did not have the name Adonai in them. And so Deutero-Isaiah. Isaiah, the original Book of Isaiah, was probably at absolute most Isaiah 1 through 39. 40 through 55, added later, despite what Dan Ellsworth may think-

Dan Beecher That is-

Dan McClellan ... about the strength of that argument.

Dan Beecher That is a, that is a reference to a conversation that we had in our patrons-only content. Check it out over on, uh, Patreon.com.

Dan McClellan And then Isaiah 56 through 66, even later. Uh, like, that's an, an example of the telephone game, where the, the stories are getting added to. They're accreting more details as they go. Uh, and so I think the, the telephone game is a live option when it comes to the transmission of the manuscripts.

Dan Beecher I think it's almost guaranteed to not be, to... It's not, it's more than a live option.

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah.

Dan Beecher It must have happened.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It did happen. And the w- and the nice thing about it, and frankly, it's probably great that it happened, because the truth of the matter is that, um, much of these writings, they're not historical. We've talked about that. We know that this is not, these are not r- you know, we're not transmitting the true and accurate history of the peoples of, you know, uh, the, the, the Israelite people. We're t- we're, we're transmitting myth, and we're transmitting, uh, stories that are, that shape culture. And as you've talked about, you've talked about in textual criticism how what ends up happening isn't that it gets worse or it gets changed to be, you know, to... Uh, it can get changed just to serve a, a purpose, you know, a specific ideological i- uh, end.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher But it can also change just to make it make more sense-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... and to make it, like, less incomprehensibly weird, or, like, you know, the first guy that wrote it wasn't a very good writer, and- ... s- the next guy, like, is like, "Well, let me fix a couple things here," or whatever.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Yeah, and, and certainly there are ways that the, the changes that have been introduced help accommodate the text and the story and the characters to new circumstances and new situations.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But, and it also results in more of a pluriformity in, in some ways, but then more uniformity in others.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And a lot of that has to do with the interpretive lenses that you're bringing to the text. And, uh, the book I'm writing right now, my second trade book, God's Biography, is precisely about how having different conceptualizations of God gives you a more flexible toolbox. If you, if you need a vindictive God, hey, we got verses for that. If you need a, a loving and a forgiving God, we got verses for that. If you need a, a young God, we got verses for that. You need an old God, guess what? We got verses for that. But wait, there's more. If you need a God who is, uh, you know, without body parts or passions, we got verses for that. If you need a God who has a body, parts, and passions, we got verses for that. Like, it is, it is your utility deity. It is your all-purpose, um, you know, Boy Scout utility deity.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Can be all things to all people. Uh- A Swiss Army God,

Dan Beecher if you will.

Dan McClellan A Swiss Army God, if you will. Yeah. So, uh, and, and- Certainly a lot of the textual transmission has people going, "Ooh, don't like that. Gonna add this little part here."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then the next person's like, "Ooh, I like that." And then, you know, down the road somebody's gonna be comparing and be like, "Ugh, it looks kind of problematic. Oh, I'll invent a new third thing."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "And that will harmonize the two things that I don't like." So it, it makes for a more dynamic, a more, uh, versatile understanding of history, understanding of God, even understanding of the biblical text because, you know, you develop ideas like, uh, accommodationism, that God accommodates everything to the capacities of, uh, and the, of the times and the places and the cultures and everything like that. Which is, which is just, I love accommodationism because, like, we don't have any evidence for this. But whatever we got wrong, God did that on purpose.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan It's like, well, can you demonstrate that? It's just the way it is, man.

Dan Beecher It's just how it do.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And, and that's really what, uh, like every now and then I'll have, I'll have people comment on my videos and be like, "You haven't even considered accommodationism." And it's like, "Oh, I have. I rejected it long ago." Because it's really just saying God did it.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's like, yeah, these things are all wrong. God did it. And-

Dan Beecher Well, I mean, that's, at some point, theologically speaking, when you run up against entire roadblocks, when you run up against something that is just, uh, not going to work, you gotta retreat to something. You know what I mean? And I don't know is unsatisfying for a lot of people, so God done it is like, okay, I guess, fine. You can have that if you need it, I guess. But it, yeah- Yeah ... it, it's, it's, it's not, it's certainly not a satisfying data-driven position to take.

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah. It's, but it, but it, uh, assuages the cognitive dissonance.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's, it helps people make themselves feel validated. It helps them to, to feel like the problem goes away by ginning up that tiniest little sliver of not impossible. And, and when it comes to the telephone game, a lot of people will just, ha, dismiss that, that metaphor as just nonsense. And if they're talking about translation, I think that's accurate. If they're talking about transmission, uh, I think the telephone game is, is definitely an accurate metaphor to some degree. It has its limits, and a lot of, a lot of folks who deploy it, because it is, it is a pretty juvenile way to, to go about this, I think sometimes stretch it well beyond, uh, a breaking point. But-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... but there is something to the telephone game, as long as we're understanding it correctly.

Dan Beecher I mean- Yeah. I mean, uh, yeah, we're, we're not gonna go all the way to David Cross levels. He's a comedian.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher He's, he's-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... exaggerating for, for comic purposes. But, but he's not wrong in the sense that, like, what we get, the thing that we have, it, this doesn't diminish its value, but the thing that we have has changed dramatically over time. The-

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I mean, half of these stories were probably oral traditions for m- decades, centuries before they were even written down.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And were honed and refined through that process because it was, so it was literally a game of telephone where one guy, you know, he's telling the story to his people, and then somebody else hears it and goes and transmits it to his people with his own flourishes and whatever. We know how that goes.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And, and a lot of people, there are a lot of people out there that are under the misapprehension that primarily oral cultures somehow magically have the ability to transmit complex- ... stories over centuries without error. Th- and that's just demonstrably not true.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan We have tested this over and over and over and over again, and oral traditions change, period.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There's no other option.

Dan Beecher Of course.

Dan McClellan Um, and so, uh, yeah, that's going to happen. And then when you commit it to text, what that does is kind of leaves an imprint of what was supposed to have been said, an imprint that will remain as long as the text remains. And so that does provide a little more accountability, a little more permanence, but it doesn't prevent people from altering stuff.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan People can still alter things all the time. If you get a manuscript and it says something, you can change that manuscript and then destroy the original, and then unless there are, uh, tons of other copies out there that people who are going to see your copy have access to, your copy is gonna be promulgated in a lot of different ways. And that's why we have different, y- manuscript families is kind of out of vogue, but, um, but that's why we have kind of concentrations of traditional readings that, that are largely, um, interpolations-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... things that, that people have added. So-

Dan Beecher Well, it's, but, yeah, the, the, I, uh, sorry, I just wanna just marvel at the thought, y- I, I'm going back a little bit, but you were talking about how people are claiming that oral transmission, transmission of stories could be perfect or whatever. And that's so, like, uh, I, you know, there's family stories in my family that were passed down and, you know, it's Grandma and Grandpa's story about this, that, and the other, and then I ta- uh, you know, I check in with my cousins about it, and they have a totally different version of that story than I have.

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah.

Dan Beecher And that's just, like, two generations. That's, it, so, like, so the thought that it can't, you know, that something could make it not only two generations, but centuries-

Dan McClellan Even within the same generation. Yeah, or, yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah, like-

Dan McClellan Or longer than that.

Dan Beecher Yeah. That, it-

Dan McClellan We, uh, we-

Dan Beecher ... it's absurd

Dan McClellan ... my family watched the episodes, episode of Bob's Burgers the other night where the pigeon gets into the restaurant, and Bob is terrified- ... of the pigeon-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... and tells the story about how- He was attacked by... The, the pigeons terrified him.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And they were like, "That wasn't you. That was Tippi Hedren in Birds."

Dan Beecher That's right.

Dan McClellan And, um-

Dan Beecher He had a-

Dan McClellan And he was like, "Oh." And it was just a false memory.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That, that movie traumatized him to the degree that he internalized that scene and thought that that was, that was a real memory of his.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And that, uh, happens. That totally happens all the time.

Dan Beecher Right. And that's how human brains work.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Our brains are s- are, are, uh, they're, they're, they're great for a lot of things, but, eh, the, the... Look, perfection is not what they do.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher That's not, that's not how our brains work.

Dan McClellan There's another one. I forget the show. But there was a show where a guy was like, "Oh, I'm, I'm going to see this guy that I knew when I was younger, and I need to apologize to him because I bullied him when we were kids. And I remember this event where I did this and tied him up, and da, da, da, da, da." And then he confronts him, and the guy was like, "Is this supposed to be a joke?" And he was like, "No. What are you talking about?" And, and the other guy was like, "I bullied you." "I was the one who did that to you." And he was like, "Oh, uh..." And yeah, human memory is, is so bizarre.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And, and part of it is the fact that we don't... We're not, like, capturing and storing memories.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Every time we remember something, we're actually generating it based on the last time that we generated it.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And that's precisely the telephone game.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Because if you generate it falsely, that's going to influence how you generate it every single time into the future, uh, until you have some kind of corrective. And those are-

Dan Beecher And that's a... And what's amazing about that is if the telephone game is operational in our own brains, just like, like, not, not even, like, me to someone else to someone else to some- but me to me, then yeah. I, I think it's safe to say that a book that is a collection of writings over many centuries, you know, that it was passed down and trans- transmitted by, you know, one scribe does it, and then another scribe copies that, yeah, we're going to... We're, we're going to have some, uh, some changes. We're gonna have some, some transmission- ... errors or improvements or whatever you wanna call it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Well, if this transmission has come to you- ... and you've enjoyed it, we would sure appreciate it if you'd consider si- uh, signing up as a patron over on patreon.com. Uh, that's the best thing that you can do to support the show. Uh, and that's where you'll get early and ad-free versions of all of our shows, as well as the patrons-only content that, uh, as the title would suggest, only our patrons get.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Uh, so we, we really appreciate our patrons so much. We also appreciate Roger Gowdy for editing the show, and we appreciate Sam Holden for being our producer, and we appreciate all of y'all for joining us today.

Dan McClellan Bye, everybody.